ARISTOCRATS
Opening Film, plus a Q&A with director Yukiko Sode
Director: Yukiko Sode
124 minutes,Japan. 2020, Language: Japanese. Subtitled, Colour
Official Competition, International Film Festival Rotterdam 2021
Hanako (the wonderful Mugi Kadowaki), in her late twenties and from the rich Haibara family, suddenly finds herself alone after breaking up with her fiancé. After a round of unsuccessful attempts at ‘arranged-marriages’ thanks to her family, she meets Koichiro (Kengo Kora) who is from the class of the elites, – lawyers, company presidents, and politicians. The night Koichiro proposes to her, she discovers that he is romantically involved with Miki (Kiko Mizuhara, Norwegian Wood), a small town, lower class woman, who through hard work and excellent grades got herself into an exclusive Tokyo university and works part-time as a hostess to finance her studies.
Japanese writer-director Yukiko Sode makes a sophisticated drama in this adaptation from a novel by Mariko Yamauchi (Ano Ko wa Kizoku: Tokyo Noble Girl) offering a contemporary window on Japan’s challenges of a divided social class and gender society, and patriarchal systems.
About Yukiko Sode
Born in Japan in 1983, Yukiko Sode is a screenwriter and director. Her debut feature, Mime-Mime (2008) won several prizes in Japan and abroad, including the Pia Festival Runner-Up and Entertainment Awards, and was nominated for the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Dragons and Tigers Award for Young Cinema, and for the New Talent Award at the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival. Her second feature, Good Stripes (2015) won the Shindo Kaneto Award (Award for the Best New Directors selected by Japan Film Makers Association).
